New Strategic Partnership Between Cardinal Sports Capital & HPL Digital Sport Creates Accelerator Program
Toronto & New York
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April 28, 2022 09:01 AM Eastern Daylight Time
Cardinal Sports Capital (CSC), a Toronto-based advisory and investment firm focused on the sports gaming and media/tech/data convergence space and HPL Digital Sport (HPLDS), a specialty group within New York-based Hot Paper Lantern, helping sports betting, fantasy sports and sports technology companies create greater brand relevance, announced the creation of a strategic partnership to form an Accelerator Program. CSC is planning to invest between $75-100 million through the Accelerator Program.
The Accelerator Program unites the strengths and capabilities of both CSC and HPLDS to help companies in the sports betting, igaming, sports technology and fantasy sports categories navigate through a host of challenges to see their business models grow quicker and become more successful. The Accelerator Program will tap dozens of key investors within the firms’ networks to fund target companies at various emerging growth stage levels. Other specific services include:
Helping to shape and create business strategies for marketplace success
Relationship building and introductions to targeted customers, vendors, partners, advisors, counsel and others to make key inroads
A guiding hand and a focus on capital raises through a large collective investor network
Advertising, partnership development, positioning, marketing, public relations, influencer engagement, investor relations and other brand building and customer acquisition solutions
The vision behind the Accelerator Program is to help streamline a company’s access to essential tools needed for entrepreneurs to obtain capital, network in the right channels, effectively articulate their value proposition and get their products and services into the hands of the right audiences.
WagerWire, a proprietary sports betting futures marketplace, is the first company to participate in the Accelerator Program.
“We are excited to leverage the combined skills of CSC and HPLDS to help jumpstart our company. The synergies between the two organizations align extremely well and, as a client, has made combined strategy calls, investor conversations, brand positioning initiatives, public relations goals, as well as overall workflow a seamless experience. These two groups work hand-in-hand, which minimizes the complexity of having a few disconnected agencies help control different parts of our business,” said Zach Doctor, co-founder and CEO at WagerWire.
“While the attention surrounding the North American sports gaming market is high, market conditions have clearly become more challenging. We see that it’s harder for even the best companies to navigate the complexities of the capital markets, investment needs, all while positioning themselves the right way with investors, potential strategic partners and customers,” said Scott Secord, partner at Cardinal Sports Capital. “We’ve partnered with HPLDS before on a number of mutual clients and feel our end-to-end services, now offered through the Accelerator Program. really complement what these early growth stage companies need.”
CSC also has a strategic partnership with Canaccord Genuity, a global investment banking and financial services company. CSC’s portfolio companies include low6, Quarter4, ThriveFantasy and WagerWire. HPLDS and CSC have previously collaborated on advisory and marketing communications efforts with Quarter4 and ThriveFantasy, as well as other clients.
“Many passionate and driven entrepreneurs come to us wanting to market their offerings to build mindshare and new users. But, a lack of investment dollars and a misunderstanding of what the investment community cares about, often creates real challenges to conducting business as they had hoped,” said Ed Moed, CEO of HPL Digital Sport. “This partnership with CSC will allow us to tap our wide-scale network of investors to allow these worthy companies the opportunity to close on their early rounds of investments, and leverage our experience and guidance as advisors to build, market, sell and conduct business as they had planned to.”
A number of HPL Digital Sport current and former clients include Sportradar, Monkey Knife Fight, BettorEdge, SharpLink Gaming, Champion Gaming, NBC Sports Edge and Rush Street Interactive.
For more information on the Accelerator Program please email: Ed Moed at emoed@hotpaperlantern.com and John Libro at jlibro@cardinalsportscapital.com.
About Cardinal Sports Capital:
Founded in 2021, Cardinal Sports Capital focuses on market sectors that include sports gaming, and the media/tech/data convergence space. The firm aims to bring a different dynamic to the commercial sports and gaming marketplace through a combination of financial investment, marketing services, and industry connectivity.
About HPL Digital Sport:
Hot Paper Lantern Digital Sport is a specialty group within Hot Paper Lantern (HPL) that works with sports betting, fantasy and sports technology brands to build greater brand relevance and acquire new audiences. The group’s unique value proposition is how it leverages years of deep expertise in this category with the way it integrates specific services such as: strategic branding, customer research/analytics, performance marketing, public relations and social media strategy, experiential and high level creative design to generate results.
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